Co-Founder & CTO - AI Catalyst Discovery Venture

The Venture

Discovering a better catalyst still runs on trial and error: form a hypothesis, synthesise a few candidates, test, repeat, for years, at a cost measured in millions. Most of the search space is never touched. It is one of the slowest, most expensive bottlenecks between the chemicals industry and a lower-carbon future.

We're building the company to change that. Spun out of A*STAR, our platform closes the loop between computation and the lab: machine learning proposes catalyst compositions worth making, simulation screens them, and an automated experimental workflow validates the winners, feeding every result back to sharpen the next cycle. It reaches candidates a traditional programme never would, in a fraction of the time and cost.

The beachhead is CO₂ to methanol and green chemicals, where industry pull is real and the economics work. Most catalyst work is improving a recipe that already exists, and the incumbent supplier usually keeps that business. The opportunity is a new process with no incumbent catalyst, and an unusual number of those are arriving between now and 2030. The core discovery IP is being licensed from A*STAR, with the inventor on board as an advisor. What the venture needs now is a founding technical leader to own the science and build the company around it.

The Role

You'll be the founding CTO. You'll own everything from the discovery campaign to a catalyst a customer can actually run in their process, taking a validated workflow and turning it into the engine of a real business. You'll work alongside a commercial co-founder (CEO), a dedicated ATUM venture team, and the inventor-advisor.

Together, we'll:

• Direct the catalysis: which chemistries we pursue, how we design the discovery campaigns, how we read the results
• Own the licensed workflow and the automated experimental loop end to end
• Take candidates from prediction to a manufacturable, deployable catalyst, not a paper
• Build defensible IP the company owns, including new catalyst compositions worth patenting
• Sit across the table from chemical customers and turn their process problems into targets we can solve
• Build the lab foundation and the science team behind it

This is not a job. It's a founding journey where you share the risk, the upside, and the impact.

Requirements

• Deep in heterogeneous materials, ideally catalysis: You hold a PhD in Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, or Materials Science, with roughly 8 to 15 years turning chemistry into things that run in the real world. Heterogeneous catalysis is the strongest fit, but we're open to adjacent ground: electrocatalysis, energy materials, nanomaterials, surface and interface chemistry. What matters is that you understand surfaces, synthesis and reactors.

• Industry-tested: You've done this inside a chemicals, catalyst or materials company's R&D, or a deep-tech startup. You know why a promising result dies at scale-up. You care whether a catalyst is manufacturable and deployable, not whether it makes a good paper.
• Comfortable directing the AI, not running it: You won't write the models yourself, but you can steer a computation-and-ML-driven discovery loop and decide what to make and test next.
• You've built physical capability before: A lab, a rig, a pilot line, a testing setup. Ideally on a budget that forced hard choices about what to buy, build or outsource.
• A builder, not a career scientist: You want to run a company, not hold a senior title inside someone else's. You're ready to leave a stable role, take equity over salary, and own the outcome, and you're energised by conservative industrial buyers rather than put off by them.

Benefits

Why Build With Us

• A hard problem worth owning: A real scientific and commercial challenge with a clear prize, and the science is yours to lead.
• A de-risked starting point: A validated workflow with industry programmes behind it, a licence from A*STAR, an inventor handing over the know-how, and real industry pull. Not a blank page.
• Founder-led: You're a co-founder with a C-level seat and meaningful founding equity, not an employee.
• Funding-ready: ATUM backs the build with pre-seed capital and grant access, plus follow-on support from our investor network.
• Hands-on partners: We're in the trenches on product, hiring, and fundraising, not just on the cap table.

Based in Singapore, where the lab and the A*STAR relationship sit. If you're not here, we sponsor and support EntrePass applications.

This is a from-zero build with real risk, and compensation is equity rather than salary until we raise. If what you want is a stable senior R&D role, this isn't it. If you want to own the science and build the company, read on.